


the world's mine oyster

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: the Rosie & Phryne friendship AU [2]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Lesbian Character, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Past Abuse, Possibly Unrequited Love, Post-Divorce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28506927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: "Has it occurred to you that making friends with the ex-wife and courting the ex-husband is a little too close for comfort?""I never talk about them with each other," Phryne said. She chased her peas around her plate. "And besides, I said he liked me better, not that he'd fallen at my feet. He's so stiff-necked I'll never get him into bed. And I don't know why Rosie divorced him - he might be horrible, in secret. I'd rather not find out the hard way."Mac had been in Paris after the war, and she knew about René. Phryne avoided her shrewd eye.
Relationships: Elizabeth MacMillan/Rosie Sanderson, Lydia Andrews & Phryne Fisher, Phryne Fisher & Elizabeth MacMillan, Phryne Fisher & Rosie Sanderson, Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson, René Dubois & Phryne Fisher, Rosie Sanderson & Jack Robinson
Series: the Rosie & Phryne friendship AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088186
Comments: 21
Kudos: 101





	the world's mine oyster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seori/gifts).



> A counterpart to _merry and yet honest too_ \- it will help if you know the previous fic, but all you need to know to understand this one is that Phryne met and befriended Rosie before she met Jack. https://archiveofourown.org/works/22351882
> 
> For Rosie, for Christmas!

Phryne hadn't come to Melbourne to amuse herself, but that didn't mean she intended to be bored. Aunt Prudence's tea-party was a necessary evil - and probably presaged some outrageous demand on her time - but there was always the chance of reigniting her friendship with Lydia, and she might find a friend in the rather pinch-faced but not uninteresting brunette who had left very quickly once John Andrews had been found dead in the bathroom. Phryne rather doubted it, given her evident squeamishness, but you never knew. Aunt Prudence had described her, in hushed tones, as _a divorcée_ , which required a degree of moral courage. And then, if Phryne required more masculine company, there was Sasha DeLisse and that delectable detective inspector.

No, Phryne thought she could keep herself tolerably well amused in Melbourne. She had no intention of exposing herself by allowing her story to become that of a grieving sister desperate for justice. Knowing Murdoch Foyle, if that got into the papers, he would find a way of twisting it to make himself look like the patient martyr faced with a hysterical harpy who wouldn't believe he had served his time. She'd seen too much - and Janey had suffered too much - to allow herself to be caught out by him.

Phryne redid her lipstick, and stared blankly at her reflection. Then she went out to Aunt Prudence's party.

Lydia Andrews was upstairs on her bed, wearing an elaborate black dressing gown and a look of faint abstraction, probably attributable to grief dulling her nerves; a book had fallen from weary fingers, and when she looked round Phryne saw that her eyes were reddened.

"Look," she said, waving the bottle of champagne and two glasses she had pinched from Lydia's maid on the way past. "I brought you medicine." Lydia smiled fitfully and pushed herself upright on her pillows: Phryne poured two generous glasses and gave her one. "Your maid seems rather badly shaken up. I found her staring at the telephone like some kind of poisonous viper. Did Aunt Prudence say you'd had to let the other one go?"

"Oh. Yes." Lydia sipped at her champagne and sighed. "I caught her stealing the silver. Very unpleasant. I was afraid there'd be a scene, but she went quietly in the end. Don't let's talk about it, Phryne. This is rather nice champagne."

"Isn't it? My hotel has quite a respectable cellar." Phryne topped up her glass. "Tell me about Miss Sanderson. I hardly saw her this morning."

"She was probably afraid they'd send her - well, her former husband to investigate poor John's -" Lydia blinked hard, and gripped Phryne's hand tightly. Tears sparkled at the corners of her eyes, but she merely cleared her throat and carried on. "Rosie Sanderson used to be married to a policeman, until last winter. They separated, and now they're - well, they've divorced."

"Bravo," Phryne said, knocking back her champagne. "It takes guts to do that. Do you know why?" 

"No. That is - Rosie said there were irreconcilable differences. I don't think he was _cruel_ or anything like that. I don't really know him, but she's from one of the oldest families in Victoria."

"Really," Phryne said. She had less than no interest in Miss Sanderson's antecedents, but this did at least explain Aunt Prudence's willingness to support her. "Would I like her, do you think?"

"She's very clever," Lydia said thoughtfully. "She has sharp edges, but she can be rather kind. She was the gentlest person alive when John and I had our disappointments. She knows the feeling well."

Phryne didn't need to ask: Lydia's letters had been few, but the messages between the lines were unmistakable. Her husband's imperfections were manifold, but she would have liked children. Lydia's eyes slid wistfully away. 

"Then I suppose I'd better go downstairs and make her acquaintance," Phryne said, leaning across to kiss Lydia's cheek. "Drink your champagne. It'll do you good."

She went downstairs and danced with Sasha DeLisse. This started a chain of events that began with the arrest of Dot Williams and the theft of Phryne's earrings, proceeded (by easy stages) through the breaking up of an abortion racket better described as butchery, the discovery of a cocaine-smuggling outfit, and the unmasking of Lydia Andrews as the King of Snow, and ended with Phryne smiling up at a furiously unimpressed Detective Inspector Jack Robinson.

"You're going to frighten off your new friend," Mac said, over a game of billiards. "She strikes me as the respectable type."

"She strikes me as _your_ type," Phryne said. Mac swore at her absently, and thrashed her at billiards.

Rosie Sanderson wasn't frightened off in the slightest. She merely said that it was a wonder Phryne had managed to buy a house in the midst of all this, and that she couldn't imagine what Phryne would be up to next.

"All I intend to do," Phryne said piously, "is buy a car."

It was really astonishing, the extent to which that trip to Ballarat got out of hand.

"I think my inspector likes me a little better, though," Phryne told Mac afterwards, over dinner. Jane had her first day at Warleigh Grammar tomorrow, and had been sent to bed early to get a good night's sleep. "He put in a good word for me with the Welfare. And that was _after_ I kidnapped his witnesses."

"He disapproves of you a particle less," Mac said dryly. "Has it occurred to you that making friends with the ex-wife and courting the ex-husband is a little too close for comfort?"

"I never talk about them with each other," Phryne said. She chased her peas around her plate. "And besides, I said he liked me better, not that he'd fallen at my feet. He's so stiff-necked I'll never get him into bed. And I don't know why Rosie divorced him - he might be horrible, in secret. I'd rather not find out the hard way."

Mac had been in Paris after the war, and she knew about René. Phryne avoided her shrewd eye.

"Well, don't blame me when worlds collide," Mac said with asperity, and when - two weeks later - they all went dancing at the Green Mill and a man fell dead on the dancefloor, precipitating the arrival of Detective Inspector Jack Robinson and Constable Collins, she grinned at Phryne with cheerful malice.

"Oh, shut _up_ ," Phryne said, making a mental note to tease her about teaching Rosie Sanderson to lindy hop some other time.

"What?" Rosie said, puzzled, tearing her eyes from the unedifying spectacle of Constable Collins attempting to search the magnificent Nerine. Thus far he had got nowhere at all.

"If this is terribly awkward for you," Phryne said, "I'm sure -"

"This is hideously awkward," Rosie said, with dignity. She had taken to the new American cocktails with enthusiasm, and Phryne didn't think the delicate flush on her cheeks had to do with encountering her ex-husband over a dead body in an illicit jazz club. "But Jack's face is the funniest thing I've seen all year. Phryne, I for one am _not_ going to be searched by Constable Collins. I think we'd better intervene."

Mac watched her stride away.

"Weren't you just telling me about that factory girl you met? The one with the night classes?"

"Yes," Mac said. "But she looks pretty in green. Are you going to rescue your detective inspector?"

"No," Phryne said. "He'll be fine." Indeed, she noticed, he treated Rosie with obvious respect, and only a little constraint. Perfectly natural, for someone encountering his ex-wife over a dead body in an illicit jazz club. Phryne told herself she was only glad because she didn't want to have to think the worse of Jack Robinson. 

He was a good man, she thought. Too dedicated to the letter of the law for her liking, but when he smiled mischievously and told her that there was too much paperwork involved to make charging her worthwhile, and when he handed over Charlie Freeman's plates burn, she thought there was a more humane light in his eyes than she'd ever seen before. And when she told him she'd taken nothing seriously since 1918, there was a look in his face that spoke of understanding. 

He also enjoyed Mr Butler's potato gratin, which attested to his excellent taste. Phryne lay awake thinking, troubled. It was one thing to sit on any handsome policeman's desk and swap food and flirtation for a look at a single file; but Jack Robinson wasn't just any indiscretion, he was her friend's ex-husband, and a serious-minded man. 

Phryne fell asleep without divining an answer.

And then the _Ruddigore_ case came upon them, and Phryne stood on stage while Jack recited Shakespeare with meaning in his eyes that was hard to look away from and hard to look at directly - _age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety_ ; Phryne shivered at the memory. But every time Phryne entertained the idea of taking Jack as a lover she thought of Rosie, and of the unexpected friendship she would be sorry to cast aside for - well, only for a man, after all. Phryne began to think Mac might be right, and this was too close for comfort.

Then Véronique Sarcelle came to her front door and a painting vanished off her wall. Jack kissed her, and Phryne _knew_ Mac was right.

"I feel a bloody fool," Phryne said to Mac, who had just prescribed her sleep, rest, fresh air and good meals to settle her nerves, and was threatening to enforce this prescription by tattling on her to Dot.

"You are a bloody fool," Mac said unemotionally, and then hugged her hard. "But we love you anyway."

"René is dead," Phryne said, trembling.

"I know," Mac said, "I heard."

"And Rosie's coming over for dinner."

"Good," Mac said tartly. "That woman keeps you in line better than anyone I know."

  
  


“I think you have rather a chance with your detective inspector," Rosie said, her face pale but resolute, and no longer as pinched as it used to be now that she had a secure job and a flat of her own. "I saw his face the other day.”

“My detective inspector is also the former husband of a dear friend,” Phryne said, catching her breath with difficulty. “It seems... unfriendly... to poach.”

Rosie, face recovering its normal colour now she'd managed to say the scandalous thing aloud, gave her a pointed look. “Phryne, I did divorce him. I wouldn’t _resent_ you.”

Phryne thought, and thought, and thought, and though she came up with some very good reasons for Rosie as to why she couldn't possibly seduce Jack, her heart still pulled her this way and that. Phryne Fisher, indecisive? It seemed Melbourne was determined to turn her life upside down.

That, Phryne would later realise with distracted wonder, was only a few days before Murdoch Foyle's undetected escape from prison. And that case very quickly consumed her, in heart, in soul, and nearly - at the end - the flesh. Even brave Jane couldn't keep herself safe; loyal Dot, or Bert, or Cec, or Mr Butler. Foyle brushed aside Rosie's fierceness and Mac's protectiveness like they were made of paper, and walked straight into her house to poison them all. It fell to Jack to carry Phryne out of Murdoch Foyle's temple of death, and Mac to curse her way through the identification of an antidote to whatever Foyle had given her. Until Foyle had been committed to solitary confinement in a much stricter prison, they kept Phryne in hospital under police guard. And Rosie came to see her.

"Flaming bloody idiot!" she said, standing at the end of Phryne’s bed with her hands on her hips. 

Phryne laughed weakly. "No wonder you and Mac agree so well. She called me a godforsaken fool." 

"I could call you all sorts of things." Rosie sat down in the visitor's chair. "It's done, then?"

"Yes. He's been charged with several counts of murder. The nun, the antiquities dealer - More to come, if we find… Well."

Rosie's face might not be pinched any more, but her hazel eyes were still sharp. "He told you where to find Janey's body then?"

_I buried her with the others… among the reeds._

Phryne waited too long to say anything. Rosie merely nodded. 

"There'll be an exhumation," Phryne said heavily. "A trial."

"I'll be with you," Rosie said matter-of-factly, and added: "Either that, or I'll find another society blackmailer for me and Jane to track down, by way of distraction. That's a very bright girl, Phryne." 

Phryne smiled mistily. "I couldn't be prouder of her."

There was a knock at the door, and Jack appeared. For a split second, both he and Phryne froze.

Rosie did not seem thus afflicted. She got up and smoothed down her skirt, picking up her handbag and hat. "Oh, good. Now you're here I can go and check on Jane."

"Would you?" Phryne said, startled out of paralysis by relief. "I've been so worried about her."

"Mac says no harm done, but she thought you would be fretting. She told me to come up here and make sure you didn't escape on the end of a knotted bedsheet. Jack, make sure she doesn't-"

"-Escape on the end of a knotted bedsheet. Yes, ma'am." Jack saluted. Rosie received the salute with great aplomb.

"I'll come back when I've seen to Jane," she told Phryne, and marched out.

Jack turned a stunned look on Phryne, who laughed and patted her bedsheets. "Come in, Jack, do."

"That was - Rosie," he said, treading tentatively in and taking a seat gingerly in the chair Rosie had just vacated. "She… is a friend of yours?"

"Oh, yes," Phryne said. Jack already knew perfectly well they were friends; Phryne thought this was the shock talking. "I think she approves. Of our friendship, I mean."

"Friendship," Jack repeated.

"I do hope we're friends, Jack."

"I hope so too," Jack said roughly, and his hand clasped hers where it lay on the sheets. His fingers were warm, and his grip neither too loose nor too tight.

Phryne smiled.


End file.
